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A Plea for a Monument 



Martyrs of the War of the Revolution. 



Read Before the National Congress 



DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 

In Washington, D> C, February 21, 1896, 

By Mrs. S. V. WHITE, of Brooklyn, N. Y., 

Chairman of Monument Committee. 

Hon. FELIX CAMPBELL, Treasurer. 




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Book . T> ^3 



A Plea for a Monument 



Martyrs of the War of the Revolution. 



Read Before the National Congress 

OF 

DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 

i, 

In Washington, D. C, February 21, 1896, 
By Mrs. S. V. WHITE, of Brooklyn, N. Y., 

Chairman of Monument Committee. 

Hon. FELIX CAMPBELL, Treasurer. 



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IN aiCHANTOK 



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Martyrs of the War of the Revolution. 



At the battle of Long Island, in August, 1776, 
the British army captured 4,000 Federal soldiers. Not 
knowing what else to do with them, nor how to guard 
so many prisoners, it was decided to use as Prisons the 
transports which had brought the soldiers from England, 
together with some abandoned ships of war. These 
were anchored in New York Harbor. They were easily 
guarded there, and when once on board these vessels, 
they literally left hope behind. Their sufferings were 
beyond the power of description. . They were crowded 
into the holds and between decks by night, without a 
ray of light to cheer the sick and dying — so crowded 
they could not move about — and only by simultaneous 
movement did they manage "to lie down. Starved for 
want of food, smothered for want of air, the less hardy 
of the men were soon relieved by death. But for more 
than seven years, this crowding was continued, for all 
the naval prisoners were eventually transferred to these 
ships, and consigned to the care of that fiend in human 
shape, Captain Cunningham, whose crimes and tortures 
were afterward recounted in his own country, when, in 
1791, he was tried, confessed, and was convicted and 
xecuted for forgery. 



Fevers, smallpox, measles, and other disorders 
swept them speedily out of life, and the "carcasses," 
as the polluted bodies were designated by the brutal 
officer in charge, were carried ashore and buried in 
trenches in the sand. 

When the war was ended, the story was told by 
the remnant of men who survived. Of them, a young 
Virginian, named Cooper, did much for his comrades, in 
the way of comforting promise of what glory should be 
theirs, when America was free and independent ; when 
the story of their hardships should be made known, and 
the dishonored bones of those heroes should be gathered 
together, and a monument erected over the graves of all 
who should suffer these ignoble deaths. Each morning, 
the officer appeared on deck, and offered amnesty to all 
who would accept it, and enlist in the army of the King, 
with rations for the starving, with clothing in place of 
rags, cleanliness in place of filth, and better than all 
else, freedom to breathe again God' s pure air, of which 
they had so long been deprived. And what is the record 
of that body of brave men ? It is said only one in all 
those thousands of heroes went over to the enemy ; and 
to our everlasting glory be it recorded, that one was a 
foreigner, a Hessian. I have not been able to find 
that one of our American soldiers, even under that 
torture, sold his "birthright for the mess of pottage." 

How universally this was rejected, let the long 



lists of the dead answer. From one of those floating 
enamel houses, "the Old Jersey," there was an average 
of about ten dead prisoners brought up each morning 
from the pestilential hold or between decks where they 
had passed away. There is an estimate that over 11,000 
died on this ship alone, while she lay at anchor, in Wal- 
labout Bay, and the names are recorded in the British 
war office, of 7,950, who died on the Jersey alone. They 
died that we might live ; that we might grow great and 
rich and strong ; that we might lead the world in Art 
and Science and Civilization. 

And yet, they are the unremembered dead. Not one 
in every hundred of the inhabitants of the United States 
remembers the story of their lives, or the story of their 
deaths ; nor that the ground which held their bones was 
once sold by the City of Brooklyn for taxes ; nor that 
after the bank caved in, and the march of progress cut 
into the ground, and the bones were being washed out to 
sea, that a Mr. Benjamin Aycrigg employed the poor 
children in the neighborhood to gather them up at one 
cent per pound, that he might give them burial. Spas- 
modic attempts have been made by many societies, and 
by many individuals ; by Patriots and Politicians to 
retrieve this wrong. Patriotic Congressmen have wasted 
their breath in calling on Congress to build a monument 
to the Martyrs of the Prison Ships of the War of the 
Revolution. Failure hitherto has crowned each enter- 
prise with defeat, and now the American people are 



determined. An organization has been formed on Long 
Island. An ex- Congressman who used all his influence 
to induce Congress to set apart a sum for this purpose, 
the Hon. Felix Campbell, of the People's Trust Co., is 
Treasurer. 

The Monument Committee have decided that on 
their calendar " there is no such word as fail," and they 
pledge themselves to fulfill the promise the young evan- 
gelist, Cooper, made to his dying comrades in the prison. 
Let every patriot in our land, man or woman or child, 
take up the cry and call so loud that every citizen of this 
glorious Republic shall hear the sound, and gathering 
tribute from palatial city to prairie farm house, from the 
coffers of the rich and the pockets of the poor, shall 
hasten to honor the graves of our ancestors. This will 
be done, and done largely by individual gift. The grate- 
ful Sons, and the grateful Daughters, all patriots, will 
contribute, and a Monument shall be set up which will 
be worthy of those who died, and worthy of the country 
for which they sacrificed their lives. 

And where shall this Monument be placed? Where 
else than on that plot of ground wherein their bones 
repose ; that spot of verdure toward which their eyes 
turned with longing during those weary years while they 
languished on the prison ships. By a merciful, and to 
us of to-day it seems a miraculous Providence, the site 
of General Greene's old fort, where General Putnam 



also held headquarters, is left to us intact, undesecrated 
by either street or building. A plot of more than 40 
acres, set in the midst of a populous city by the sea, in 
near proximity to the battlefield of Long Island, where 
4,000 of them were taken prisoners in one day, in sight 
of the scene of their martyrdom, is set apart by the 
hand of destiny and kept for us sacred although for- 
gotton. We have, like Martha, been "cumbered with 
much serving." We older people have busied ourselves 
with the world's work, and amused ourselves with the 
world's pleasures, while our children have grown up and 
forgotten, and their children have come upon the scene, 
and the old story has been forgotten to be told. More 
than five generations of allotted life have passed, and 
still our ancestors of the War of the Revolution are 
counted among the unremembered dead. 

A titled foreigner lately visited our shores, and 
almost the first day of his sojourn among us asked his 
entertainers to show him our great buildings and monu- 
ments. He was shown the unfinished tomb of General 
Grant, and the bronze statues of Washington and Lin- 
coln. " But have you not a monument to the heroes of 
the Revolution, for they were brave men. Have you 
nothing but Bunker Hill?" Alas, for human records, 
kept only in the memories of the busy men who keep 
pace with the rapid world of to-day ! The entertainers of 
royalty did not even know there was a Gethsemane in 



our very midst, that within sight, from the highest build- 
ing in New York, the spot can be seen where their bones 
are mouldering into dust ; where so many thousands 
died on the old Jersey alone, and there were 15 trans- 
ports in that terrible fleet anchored in the Bay. 

Patriots of the grandest Republic in the world, we 
call upon you to-day to waken from your sleep of more 
than a century and make atonement for our ingratitude. 
Let us not each wait for the other. Let not the Ameri- 
can Sons, nor any other Sons of the American Revolu- 
tion, stand back to see who shall have the honor. Let 
not the Colonial Dames, nor the Daughters, nor the 
American Daughters, quibble longer in the settlement of 
the question as to who is entitled to sit on the right hand 
or the left. Let us join hands and complete the circle. 
From Maine to Louisiana, from the Gulf to the North- 
ern Pacific, let us cross again to New England, and thus 
surround a territory so vast, so rich, so magnificent, that 
no voice disputes its claim to be the grandest wonder of 
the world. Let us no longer wait for legislative act to 
build this monument to our fathers. Let it be an act of 
reverence on the part of every individual. Let every 
dollar of the $200,000 asked for come with a blessing on 
its face, and come warm from the hearts of America's 
patriot children. 

As the Southern matron sounded the call for the 
purchase of Mount Vernon, so let the call be heard for 



this monument to be built. It is said women were first 
at the tomb of our Lord, and we were told they were 
early at the sepulqher. Alas ! we have not been early, 
but we will atone for the past by our determined efforts 
in this cause. We will gather our offerings from the 
whole country, and build such a monument that our 
children's children shall not need to ask : " What mean 
ye by these stones ?" But the story will be already told, 
and told so well that it will remain in the minds of all 
the generations that are to come. 

ELIZA M. CHANDLER WHITE. 




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